Effectiveness of empathy enhancement programs for social workers working with older adults: A quasi-experimental study

Abstract

Summary Empathy is an essential attribute required for care providers to provide quality care and effective relationship-based practice. Cognitive empathy is understanding another person’s experiences, concerns, and perspectives, and affective empathy is sharing another person’s emotion. Cognitive empathy was found to be a significant protector to burnout and stress, while affective empathy was found to be a significant contributor to compassion satisfaction among social workers. This quasi-experimental study assessed the effectiveness of two empathy enhancement programs on 105 social workers working with older adults in South Korea. The experimental group (n = 52) received a simulation-based empathy enhancement program along with a brief mindfulness practice session, and the comparison group (n = 53) watched a 30-minute-long educational video about empathy. Data were collected prior to and two weeks after the intervention. Findings The experimental group showed significantly lower levels of psychosocial stress compared to the comparison group. It also showed significantly higher levels of cognitive empathy and significantly lower levels of compassion fatigue at posttest. Furthermore, the comparison group demonstrated significantly higher levels of a unidimensional factor of empathy, compassion satisfaction, and caring efficacy at posttest. Application Pre- and post-test differences, in different outcome measures from the groups, indicate the benefits of each empathy enhancement program on social workers working with older adults. In particular, the present study validates that the simulation-based empathy enhancement program can enhance the cognitive empathy of social workers and reduce burnout and stress. A further randomized controlled trial study is needed to examine the program’s effectiveness with minimal bias and confounding factors.

Effectiveness of Simulation-Based Empathy Enhancement Program for Caregivers (SEE-C) Evaluated by Older Adults Receiving Care

“…Education and expectations about what is considered a desirable attitude for caregivers may affect the cognitive way they appreciate themselves. However, it does not guarantee a change in behaviors that takes empathetic attitudes toward others [17].…”

“…The authors have developed a Simulation-based Empathy Enhancement program for Caregivers of the Elderly (SEE-C) by modifying the Dementia LiveTM program of the AGEu-cate Training Institute in the USA [24] and the Korean Dementia Simulation program for Caregivers [25,26], trying to incorporate it into an interview protocol to talk with the elderly living alone. SEE-C was modified by changing focus from dementia to aging and by adding a brief breathing meditation session [17,18]. It aimed to help care providers enter the world of older adults by experiencing similar feelings and challenges from perspectives of older adults.…”

“…The authors of this study have developed a Simulation-based Empathy Enhancement Program for Caregiver of the Elderly (SEE-C) and compared a simulation-based empathy training group to a lecture-based empathy training group enrolling 209 social workers and direct care workers of older adults living alone. The authors have found that SEE-C can improve the empathy and reduce the compassion fatigue of social workers who perform administrative tasks and provide care service for general older adults including elderly living alone in community welfare centers [17]. On the other hand, among direct care workers who visited the home of the elderly living alone, the lecture-based empathy training group had significantly higher levels of empathy than the simulation-based group, although pretest-posttest differences were found only for the lecture-based group [18].…”

The Query Search Method

“…The common thread that connects these behavioral stances is empathy. The concept of empathic care towards library patrons is inspired by the healthcare field, where empathy of care is an assignation ascribed to caregivers' cognitive, behavioral, and emotional empathy that, when emoted to others, lowers stress and burnout for the care providers as well (Wilkinson et al, 2017;Han & Kim, 2021). Librarianship, as an informational caring field, requires librarians to exercise empathy of care to perceive all queries as meaningful and all patrons as in need of care.…”